Idaho parents react to recent bill targeting transgender youth

On Tuesday, the Idaho state Senate refused to take up a bill passed by House lawmakers that would have made it a felony to provide gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. It would have also made it a felony, punishable by up to life in prison, to take a child across state lines to obtain such care. Although the apparent defeat of the bill is a relief to LGBTQ advocates and allies, some view it as the latest example of politically motivated attacks targeting the transgender community in Idaho. Joining us are Cole LeFavour, a writer, LGBTQ advocate and former Idaho state representative and senator; Jennifer Blair, an Idaho mother of a transgender, non-binary teenager; and Preston Thomson, an Idaho father of a transgender daughter currently receiving hormone therapy and puberty blockers.

The Trevor Project provides crisis support services to LGBTQ young people at all hours. Their number is 1-866-488-7386. You can also text the word “start” to 678-678.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Last week, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a bill that would have made it a felony to provide gender affirming medical care to transgender youth and it went further. Parents who crossed state lines to seek such care for their children could have faced life in prison. This week, the Idaho State Senate refused to take up the bill, so it appears to be dead. But the fears it stirred up among young transgender Idahoans and their families is still very much alive. Preston Thomson and Jennifer Blair are both parents of transgender teens. Cole LeFavour is a writer, LGBTQ advocate and former state lawmaker in Idaho. They all join me now. Welcome to Think Out Loud.

Preston Thomson: Thank you so much for having us.

Jennifer Blair: Thanks for welcoming us here.

Dave Miller: Preston Thomson, first, your 15 year old daughter, Lynn is transgender and is getting gender affirming care right now in the form of puberty blocking medication and hormone therapy. I think we should actually start with some basic grounding in these issues. What are these two different steps, puberty blockers and hormone therapy?

Preston Thomson: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I’m definitely not a doctor but I’ll give my best on this. But Lynn has been, for the last about year, year and a half, has been on blockers. This is basically just something, it’s a medication that’s been around forever. They used to talk about this or maybe not forever, but they’ve been using this for a long time for people who would go into puberty early or for other things like that, to delay that and give people a little bit more time. It’s been used in trans care for the same type of ideas, right? It’s a reversible process. If she went off her blockers and went off her estrogen, she would actually go back. In fact, we actually had a situation like that with an insurance issue where things got delayed and her testosterone levels actually would start to go back to more of what you would see biologically. For Lynn though, I mean, this has been a life saving care. She’s really, really, really blossomed in this, both from the support that she’s had and from the changes she’s seen. She’s, she has pretty, a very, very strong form of gender dysphoria, where what she sees in the mirror is not at all what matches up and it causes her a ton of distress. And I guess, I don’t know how to put that into words because I haven’t experienced what she’s feeling, but since she’s been on these medications and getting the care that she needs, it’s been really just a huge change in her attitude and how she’s feeling in her outlook.

Dave Miller: What sorts of discussions did you and your daughter Lynn and your wife have with medical professionals before she started this treatment?

Preston Thomson: Yeah, thank you, by the way for that question. This is something that I think a lot of people seem to have the mistaken idea that this is something that a lot of people are just jumping into. It couldn’t be further from the truth. So first of all, we spoke with her pediatrician and so we took her in, she has a really great pediatrician. First thing that her pediatrician said was, ``Look, I care about you and your wellness. I’m going to refer to you the way that you want to be referred to and we’re going to find the right level of care. After that, we kind of went through, we had some initial consultations with a doctor, Dr. Alviso in Boise who specializes in this type of work. And he’s been fantastic by the way for her. But before we could start anything, there was actually a lot of consultation. We got her in with counselors. We got her in with other both mental health and medical professionals before we started any of this. And I think it was about six months later when she first got approved. We also had to wait for insurance on a lot of these things too and so, after struggling with the insurance, after working with our professionals, about six months later she started blockers and started estrogen. And so yeah, this is not a lightly entered into process.

Dave Miller: Jennifer Blair, you have a 16 year old who is transgender. How have they been doing over the last few weeks?

Jennifer Blair: The last few weeks were a little bit rough. They have a lot of friends who are also LGBTQ and as teenagers, they get together and talk, they ask questions when they come home about why does Idaho hate me? Why does the government hate me? Why do they find me disgusting? Things like that. It’s been really hard for these kids.

Dave Miller: One of the arguments in favor of this bill that was put forward is that young people are not mature enough to make decisions this big. Your 16 year old has chosen not to receive puberty blockers or hormone therapy. How much have they thought about what it would mean to do either of those?

Jennifer Blair: We talked about it at least weekly. Our youngest came to us at age 11 with the first suicide attempt. And so we’ve been working through this pretty diligently with professionals for about five years. And the hormone topic comes up a lot. They’re very much aware of every positive element of hormone replacement and also all of the side effects and just trying to find a balance that will help control their dysphoria without that risk/benefit analysis that everybody goes through. And so far, for them, they’ve decided that they’re managing their dysphoria okay without hormonal medications. If that changes in the next couple of years, then we’ll make some different plans over that. But right now that’s where we’re at.

Dave Miller: I should note that the Trevor Project provides crisis support services to LGBTQ young people at all hours. Their number is 1(866) 488-7386. You can also text the word ‘start’ to 678678. So Jennifer Blair, the lawmakers who championed this bill said they were doing this out of concern for the welfare of children who they said were too young to make life altering decisions about their bodies. I’m curious what you make of that argument.

Jennifer Blair: Honestly, it’s just silly because no children, no child is making permanent decisions for their bodies, that’s why they have parents, that’s why they have medical professionals. We’re not just sending kids into a drug store to pick and choose whatever medication they want. And the process is pretty labor intensive. There’s lots of steps like Preston mentioned. There’s lots of discussion and conversation and stuff that goes through it. The people who are participating in this are not aware, like unaware of the side effects. We know what’s happening. We have researched it. I hope this doesn’t sound too angry or grumpy, but I don’t need a legislator who has never met a transgender person to tell me how to protect my child. I’ve been in the trenches doing this their entire life and particularly the last five years.

Dave Miller: Preston, you called this lifesaving care for your daughter. What do you mean?

Preston Thomson: I mean, so literally this is one of the things that we’ve talked about. Thankfully Lynn, when she came out to us, knew she was coming into a supportive environment. We’ve had friends who were transgender, one of my best friends from work transitioned several years ago and I think that’s actually part of those things. I still remember Lynn going, ‘Oh wait, you can do that?’ as about an 11 year old at the time. But it was one of these things where, as we’ve talked more and especially like Jen said, over the last couple of weeks, once we found out about this legislation and how they tried to slide it through, she’s been a lot more vocal about what it meant. Anytime she sees any type of a masculine feature in the mirror or anything like that, she will just get very, very sad like, and thankfully we’ve got a great line of communication, but she actually wrote the letter that she didn’t get to give to the house in speaking against this bill, really spoke to the fact that like she thinks that she would have at least attempted if not ended her life by now if she wasn’t getting this type of care and I mean, that’s the thing is that there are so many of these kids who on top of the care itself, which gives them hope, which gives them a chance to move forward. And every kid has to make that decision with their parents, with the support group along the way. When they come out with this legislation, it just makes the kids feel, like Jen saying, why does our state hate us? Why do people feel this way? My child hasn’t been…

Dave Miller: What do you say to that, when she asked you that question?

Preston Thomson: There are a lot of things that I say that I cannot say on public radio.

Dave Miller: Can you give us a version of that, that you can say?

Preston Thomson: Absolutely, we basically say there’s a lot of ignorance. There are a lot of people who for whatever beliefs they may have have not informed themselves on this topic. And unfortunately it seems like in Idaho, we have people who are trying to kind of out-political Texas or out-political anything. We’ve kind of got what seems to be a race to regression. And so, first of all, what we tell our kids is we’re gonna take you, especially with them, we’re going to take you somewhere where it’s safe. Before we found out about the whole life in prison for crossing state lines, we were gonna be like, ‘Hey, we’ll go to California’, we’ll go get some of these things taken care of. When we found out about that condition, it’s like, okay, we will still go to California, but we’ll just move there instead and Idaho can say goodbye to us as residents. It breaks our heart because we’ve raised our kids there, we’ve been there for more than 15 years, but if it’s not going to be a safe place for our kids, we’re not going to be there and our kids realize that and then they get concerned more for their friends who don’t have those options per se.

Dave Miller: If you’re just tuning in, we’re talking right now about the bill in the Idaho legislature that would have made it a felony for parents or doctors to pursue gender affirming care for children who are transgender, Preston Thomson and Jennifer Blair are both parents of transgender teens and Cole LeFavour is with us as well, a writer and an LGBTQ advocate and a former state lawmaker in Idaho. Cole, in 2004, you became the first openly gay person to be elected to the Idaho state legislature. You served for eight years, finishing as a state senator in 2012. What was the political climate like for you back then?

Cole LeFavour: When I was first elected, a lot of my colleagues said that they didn’t think they’d ever met anyone who was queer, who was gay. And so it was a more moderate environment at that point, perhaps not as charged an anti-gay and anti-queer environment there, but by the time I left in 2012, after trying for eight years to pass proactive legislation to include gay and transgender people in in our human rights act, I saw a turn very hard for a much more hostile environment and an environment that didn’t listen to those who came to testify.

Dave Miller: Bills like what was being considered in Idaho are part of a nationwide movement. As you well know, Texas passed its own version of a ban on gender affirming care recently. 20 other states, 28 other states have taken up some kinds of bills to limit access to health care for young transgender people. Did the passage of this bill in the Idaho House surprise you?

Cole LeFavour: I would say I was surprised it didn’t have more than one no vote on the GOP side. But what that told me was that it’s one of those litmus test votes and that there are those in the politics of the extreme, on kind of that Trump politics, who are using this as kind of that testing ground in the upcoming primary elections here for the legislature to say who is conservative enough to be called a Republican? And that’s disturbing to see something this cruel.

Dave Miller: When we learned this week that the bill is not going to go forward, It wasn’t, it seemed because Republicans in the state Senate were opposed to the basic ideas of it. In fact they said, we don’t think young people should be getting this treatment. It seems that they had more procedural questions about some of the particular language of the bill. What does that tell you about the future of, if not this particular bill, then the ideas behind it?

Cole LeFavour: I know that in sessions past, we’ve also faced various anti-trans bills and I would say that this one will probably come back. It’s also, though, going to depend on who is in leadership in the Senate and and how willing people are to stand up in the face of what is basically the use of state law to terrorize families, selectively terrorize families as if perhaps progressive families are the only ones to have trans young people, which is just totally not the case.

Dave Miller: Jennifer Blair, my understanding is that several years ago, a young transgender friend of one of your children came to stay with your family for a while. Can you describe how he was doing at the time?

Jennifer Blair: Yeah, when he first came to stay with us, he came because his mental health was in a state that his parents weren’t quite capable of dealing with. I’ve never seen a child like this before. He would spend hours just sitting in his chair with his knees pulled up to his chest, just staring, literally at nothing. The only word I can ever use to describe it is the word catatonic. If we would tap him and say it’s time for dinner, he would come, but it was very robotic, he was really struggling and we were taking him to therapy and appointments and doctors and trying different mental health meds and we started to notice that his distress was dramatically worse when he was having his period and so, because he was 15 at the time, we were able to take him and get a shot from the doctor to stop his periods. It’s a birth control shot that stops periods and it helped tremendously, but it didn’t help enough. By the time he came to stay with us in the middle of the school year, he had already missed 12 to 15 days of school, Then he was miserable and we spent until he was 16, fighting with different rules and procedures and doctors and ended up driving down to Salt Lake and finally getting him on testosterone, which made all the difference in the world for this kid and now he’s like 21, he’s healthy, he’s happy, he’s doing great, he’s got a partner and an apartment and a job and everything’s wonderful. But he would tell you if you asked him that if he hadn’t started testosterone when he did, he would be dead, he would not have survived.

Dave Miller: Preston Thomson, it seems that this bill is not going to pass, although as we’ve heard, we never quite know until a session is done, but where do you go from here? Given that it was a real possibility that it could have passed?

Preston Thomson: I mean honestly we kind of feel like we’re on borrowed time. We have some logistics in terms of, our kids love our friends in Idaho, they love their friends. We have a great support group of friends all over, which is why we haven’t left yet, but long term, I mean this type of regressive policy and just the threat that’s there for us while we’re here, we’re going to be using whatever we can and my 15 year old has actually really kind of caught the activism bug for this because she realizes how many people aren’t able to speak up against this. But I mean we’ll be very vocal, we’ll be trying to support what we can, but the demographics of Idaho are definitely against us right now. So long term, I won’t be surprised if, 2 to 3 years down the line, once our oldest has finished high school and if Lynn wants to finish school with her friends here, we’ll stick around, but long term, we’re probably out of Idaho just because of how it is, I can’t risk my family’s safety. Once we no longer have those immediate concerns, that might be something, but to give an idea of how things have shifted, five years ago, my wife and I thought we were going to be in Idaho forever. We loved it. We love Boise. We still think Boise is a fantastic place, however the legislature in the state is making it almost untenable. Especially seeing what it does to our LGBTQ plus community. It’s having it, even before I knew about my daughter, this was something that was near and dear to my heart, but seeing it affect my children this way and especially Lynn, it really is heartbreaking and it’s honestly, it seems like Idaho is looking for excuses to punch down on people, like Cole said, to kind of prove how conservative they are by showing, hey, I’m not gonna let this type of, I’m not going to let the same type or this type of thing stand. And I think a lot of those legislators would love to never see a bill like this come across, but we’ve got a lot of people who just really want to push it and really want to force this. And so, long term, even after we moved out of state, I plan on financially supporting whoever is going to be fighting against this type of cause, in Idaho and elsewhere, but for us, yeah, Idaho is just not the same that it was when we moved here 15 years ago, with a two year old child in tow or an almost two year old child in tow. I mean now 15.5 years later, we’ve raised our whole family there and it breaks our heart that we’re going to have to go. But, we likely will be moving out west to California or maybe Washington, most likely California, just because of the job prospects, I work in tech.

Dave Miller: Preston Thomson, Jennifer Blair and Cole LeFavour, thank you.

Jennifer Blair: Thanks so much for providing this platform.

Preston Thomson: We appreciate it.

Dave Miller: Preston Thomson and Jennifer Blair are both parents of transgender teens. Cole LeFavour is a writer and an LGBTQ advocate and a former state lawmaker in Idaho. I want to remind folks once again that the Trevor Project provides crisis support services to LGBTQ young people at all hours. Their number is 1 (866) 488-7386. You can also text the word ‘start’ to 678678.

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